In February, 1896, Henry of Philadelphia showed microscopic
slides containing blood which was infested with numbers of living
and active filaria embryos. The blood was taken from a colored
woman at the Woman's Hospital, who developed hematochyluria after
labor. Henry believed that the woman had contracted the disease
during her residence in the Southern States.
Curran gives quite an exhaustive article on the disease called in
olden times "eaten of worms,"--a most loathsome malady. Herod the
Great, the Emperor Galerius, and Philip II of Spain perished from
it. In speaking of the Emperor Galerius, Dean Milman, in his
"History of Latin Christianity," says, "a deep and fetid ulcer
preyed on the lower parts of his body and ate them away into a
mass of living corruption." Gibbon, in his "Decline and Fall,"
also says that "his (Galerius's) death was caused by a very
painful and lingering disorder. His body, swelled by an
intemperate course of life to an unwieldy corpulence, was covered
with ulcers and devoured by immense swarms of those insects who
have given their names to this most loathsome disease." It is
also said that the African Vandal King, the Arian Huneric, died
of the disease.
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